ALTERNATIVE METHOD FOR LOW FREQUENCY IMPACT SOUND MEASUREMENT FOR BUILDING FIELD TESTS

What do high heels, dog nails, and dragging furniture have in common? They are all frequent sources of noise pollution and annoyance in multi-story buildings. Building codes exist to control and mitigate such noise, but these codes are outdated and fail to protect the residents against noise annoyance. Footstep noise is still the number one cause of complaints among the residents. The impact performance of floor-ceiling assemblies is characterized using a single-number rating called the Impact Sound Rating (ISR). A standard tapping machine is used in pre-defined locations on the floor and the radiated Sound Pressure Level (SPL) is measured in the receiving room downstairs to calculate the ISR rating. This measurement method has a lot of variabilities that cause problems for the residents or the acoustical consultants. The force from the tapping machine depends on the floor compliance but it is not measured for the test. An FRF-like measurement is required to account for this force difference and compare the performance of different assemblies. Additionally, a non-diffuse sound field exists in rooms at low frequencies that cause high variation in the test results based on the microphone positions. In this work, a new measurement method is proposed that provides an FRF-like (without consideration of phase) performance using a ratio of autopower spectra (RPF) and shows an improved reproducibility in the low-frequency non-diffuse sound field region. A 1 – 1.5 dB measurement variability is expected as compared to 4 – 10 dB variability observed with the existing method. The guidelines to conduct the proposed test are detailed in this work

IMPROVED LOW-FREQUENCY IMPACT INSULATION CLASS MEASUREMENTS BASED ON COMPARISON TECHNIQUES

In today’s world, noise pollution is growing as a major concern and it is becoming more and more difficult to find quiet places. But when the problem escalates to the extent that people are annoyed with loud noises even in their apartments, it becomes an alarming issue for engineers. Around the world, cities have defined some basic performance requirements for buildings, and isolation of residents from noise is one of the cardinal performance requirements. In the United States, building codes use the Impact Insulation Class (IIC) rating to characterize the performance of floor/ceiling assemblies. This method uses the response measured in one-third octave (OTO) bands from 100 Hz to 3150 Hz and compares it with a reference curve to obtain the rating. However, this standard suffers from some limitations. The standard assumes the receiving rooms in the testing labs to be modally dense for all frequency OTO bands under consideration but the labs usually have a non-modally dense acoustic environment for low-frequency bands. Due to this, different labs give different results for the same assembly, thereby making it difficult to get reproducible IIC measurements. With the method proposed in this report, the room contribution for these low-frequency OTO bands could be removed, paving a way to obtain more reproducible IIC measurements. This room contribution is removed by using a reference calibration assembly with a known sound power and employing the comparison technique. The comparison of measurements of the reference assembly in the test labs with the known sound power gives a calibration factor, defining how the room contribution affects the measurement data. These calibration factors are then used for the actual assemblies to get to the “true” sound power, unbiased by the effects of room contribution. This report uses a simply supported rectangular plate as a reference assembly and analytically calculates the mode shapes, mobility, and sound power radiation. These analytical predictions are compared with the experimentally obtained values. This reference assembly is then used in a reverberation room to characterize the room contribution in one-third octave bands. The reference assembly is then replaced by a new, unknown assembly, and the “true” sound power information is predicted using the proposed method

Discovering healthy eating habits

Children who are unsupervised after school are most likely to get involved with activities that negatively affect their outcomes as an adult. This project seeks to engage children by adding value to an after school program. These programs help build lifelong skills. More specifically this focused on nutritional health of elementary school aged children.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1399/thumbnail.jp

Restriction theorem for the Fourier-Hermite transform associated with the normalized Hermite polynomials and the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck-Schr\"odinger equation

In this article, we prove the analogue theorems of Stein-Tomas and Srtichartz on the discrete surface restrictions of Fourier-Hermite transforms associated with the normalized Hermite polynomials and obtain the Strichartz estimate for the system of orthonormal functions for the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck operator $L=-\frac{1}{2}\Delta+\langle x, \nabla\rangle$ on $\mathbb{R}^n$. Further, we show an optimal behavior of the constant in the Strichartz estimate as limit of a large number of functions

Procarbazine, CCNU and vincristine (PCV) versus temozolomide chemotherapy for patients with low-grade glioma: a systematic review.

Low-grade gliomas (LGG) encompass a heterogeneous group of tumors that are clinically, histologically and molecularly diverse. Treatment decisions for patients with LGG are directed toward improving upon the natural history while limiting treatment-associated toxiceffects. Recent evidence has documented a utility for adjuvant chemotherapy with procarbazine, CCNU (lomustine), and vincristine (PCV) or temozolomide (TMZ). We sought to determine the comparative utility of PCV and TMZ for patients with LGG, particularly in context of molecular subtype. A literature search of PubMed was conducted to identify studies reporting patient response to PCV, TMZ, or a combination of chemotherapy and radiation therapy (RT). Eligibility criteria included patients 16 years of age and older, notation of LGG subtype, and report of progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS), and treatment course. Level I, II, and III data were included. Adjuvant therapy with PCV resulted in prolonged PFS and OS in patients with newly diagnosed high-risk LGG. This benefit was accrued most significantly by patients with tumors harboring 1p/19q codeletion and IDH1 mutation. Adjuvant therapy with temozolomide was associated with lower toxicity than therapy with PCV. In patients with LGG with an unfavorable natural history, such as with intact 1p/19q and wild-type IDH1, RT/TMZ plus adjuvant TMZ may be the best option. Patients with biologically favorable high-risk LGG are likely to derive the most benefit from RT and adjuvant PCV

Unveiling Multilinguality in Transformer Models: Exploring Language Specificity in Feed-Forward Networks

Recent research suggests that the feed-forward module within Transformers can be viewed as a collection of key-value memories, where the keys learn to capture specific patterns from the input based on the training examples. The values then combine the output from the 'memories' of the keys to generate predictions about the next token. This leads to an incremental process of prediction that gradually converges towards the final token choice near the output layers. This interesting perspective raises questions about how multilingual models might leverage this mechanism. Specifically, for autoregressive models trained on two or more languages, do all neurons (across layers) respond equally to all languages? No! Our hypothesis centers around the notion that during pretraining, certain model parameters learn strong language-specific features, while others learn more language-agnostic (shared across languages) features. To validate this, we conduct experiments utilizing parallel corpora of two languages that the model was initially pretrained on. Our findings reveal that the layers closest to the network's input or output tend to exhibit more language-specific behaviour compared to the layers in the middle